President Donald Trump did not take kindly to being seen as empathetic.
Trump, 79, fired off a jab at ABC News’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, on Monday, taking issue with the idea that he reached out to the journalist to check in on him after the chaotic White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25.
“Jonathan Karl, of ABC Fake News, made a statement that I called him early in the morning, the day after the assassination attempt, to ask whether or not HE was OK,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “No, this was a hit on ME, not HIM, and I didn’t make such a call, why would I do that?”
“He called me, but I didn’t take his call — He just confirmed that to me when he called again. I would say that’s very dishonest reporting," he continued. “He’s trying to make himself look important but, I’m not surprised, because it comes from ABC Fake News!”
Reached for comment, the White House referred the Daily Beast to the president’s post.
Karl did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
The president’s post refers to a video shared by Karl, 58, on April 26, the day after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where 31-year-old Cole Allen allegedly attempted to breach the event while carrying two firearms and several knives.
“I got a call this morning on my landline at about, a little after 7 a.m.,” Karl, a former president of the White House Correspondents Association, said in the video. “Not many people call me on that number these days, but it was the president. It was President Trump calling.”
“He said, to see if I was okay with all that happened last night, if I was okay. And then we spoke for a few minutes,” he added.
Karl shared a post on X nearly two hours after Trump’s diss, detailing a phone call he had with the president on Monday.
“In a phone conversation a short while ago, President Trump stopped short of saying Iran had violated the ceasefire,” Karl wrote.
The president said, according to the journalist, that the administration would “look into” an Iranian attack on a South Korean cargo ship, and that the missile and drone attacks on the United Arab Emirates on Monday “were shot down for the most part.”
The veteran political reporter told The Daily Beast Podcast in November that the geriatric president “seems to have a hell of a lot of energy,” and that the best time to reach him is either very early in the morning or very late at night.
“He doesn’t sleep. I don’t know how much he does it,” Karl told host Joanna Coles. “I would find that the best time to reach him if I wanted to call him during the campaign was either late at night—far later than you would ever call most other people—and very early in the morning."
“I mean, I would talk to him sometimes before seven, and he’s already up,” he added. “He’s already watching television.”
